The Saga of the Mask
by Alibi Nonsense
Summary: "Why do you wear the mask anyway?" asks Obito, standing over the pyre of clothes and poking it with a stick until they catch. Rin hangs nonchalantly from a tree. /"He's self-conscious," she says.


**A/N. Warnings ahead of time for some vomiting, the use of the word 'damn', some kidnapping, and one instance of non-con kissing.**

.

Kakashi looks at Obito.

Obito looks at Kakashi.

Kakashi looks at Rin.

Rin looks at Kakashi.

Kakashi looks at Minato-sensei.

Minato-sensei shrugs.

"Not my idea," he says. "I've already seen your face."  
Rin and Obito sharply turn to look at Minato-sensei. "You have?" they ask. Obito puts the zip ties, serrated knife and pliers down onto Kakashi's bathroom sink.

"I just came to stop _them_!" says Minato-sensei. "Yes I have," he says to Obito and Rin. "He looks normal. There's nothing under the mask that you wouldn't expect from a mouth, chin and nose."

Obito turns back to Kakashi (who has pulled the shower curtain round himself like a plastic, blue shield and is holding a wet flannel up to his face) and picks the serrated knife back up. "Can I at least cut the flannel away?" he asks.

"No," says Kakashi, muffled through the flannel. "Can I have my shower now?"

"Can we see your face?" asks Rin, picking up the pliers. "I'm sorry we were going to hogtie you to a chair. That was all Obito's idea."

Kakashi's eyes shoot over to the blushing genin holding the serrated knife.

"Hey!" says Obito. "Only until we could cut away your mask."

"Or until you ran out of toenails," says Rin. "Either one."

"And like I said," says Minato-sensei, "I was stopping them."

.

"Happy Birthday!" Rin and Obito chorus, switching the lights on.

"It's not my birthday," says Kakashi. "And anyway, this is _my_ flat. _Why_ are you here?"

Obito grins. "Doesn't matter," he says. "Sit down! Sit down! We made a feast!"

The so-called 'feast' consists entirely a cauldron of cheese and a plate of hard bread. The cheese cauldron, when Kakashi looks closer, has a tiny portable gas burner sitting underneath it. It takes up the whole of Kakashi's kitchen table and is obviously going to be way too big for the three of them.

"Is anyone else helping us eat this?" he asks. "And, more pressingly, _why_ are we eating this?"

"Stop complaining and eat," says Rin. She has picked up some of the bread with a long, metal skewer, and has dipped it into the-

"What type of cheese _is_ that?" asks Kakashi, watching in horror as, during the very slow and arduous eating process Rin undertakes, the cheese spreads in strings all over her hands, the pot, her face, her hair, her clothes, the table, and the floor.

"Gruyere," says Rin… although it comes out closer to 'Guu-eeeuu'.

"Is this another attempt to see under my mask?" asks Kakashi, flatly.

"Maybe," says Obito. He has skewered a piece for himself and is dragging it through the cheese. "But, if you don't eat, it's a waste of food."

"I'm not eating," says Kakashi, "and stop getting cheese all over my kitchen."

.

The next time he shows up to the mission desk, the chunin at the desk looks up at him. "Oh," he says, blandly. "Are you Hatake Kakashi, by any chance?"

"Yes," says Kakashi.

"Here," says the chunin, handing over a scroll. "You were specifically requested."

"The client wants me to do a strip tease," says Kakashi, flatly.

"Yup," says the chunin. "Don't ask me why. I'm guessing they like pre-pubescents."

Kakashi knows exactly why. The scroll is in Rin's handwriting.

He eye-smiles. "Do you have any other solos?" he asks. "Preferably outside of the village."

"Damn it," says the chunin, hengeing back into Rin.

.

"If you don't show us your mask," says Obito, "then the dog _gets_ it."

He is holding a kunai to the throat of a dog: a dog that doesn't seem to understand the purpose of a kunai and, consequently, doesn't seem all that scared.

"There it is," says Kakashi, pointing at his mask.

"I didn't mean that!" says Obito, blushing. "It came out wrong!"

"Let the dog _go_ , Obito," says Minato-sensei.

Obito pouts.

"It's not even my dog," says Kakashi.

.

"If you don't show us under your mask," says Obito, "then the cat _gets_ it."

Tora looks at him balefully from behind a kunai covered in cat scratches.

Kakashi sighs. Obligingly, he picks a spare mask out of his emergency pack and shows Obito the inside lining of the mask.

"Let the cat go, Obito," says Minato-sensei: "it's the Daimyo's wife's."

.

"You even sleep with it on!" yells Obito in frustration. "That's not fair"

Kakashi falls out of bed in shock and his heart hammers. In his dark bedroom, Obito's goggles look luminescent.

"Nice underwear," says Rin, from over by the window.

.

"Why do you _wear_ the mask _anyway_?" asks Obito, standing over the pyre of clothes and poking it with a stick until they catch. Rin hangs nonchalantly from a tree.

"He's self-conscious," she says. "He doesn't think his face is good enough for the likes of us."

"It's the opposite," says Kakashi, watching his clothes burn. "It's too good for the likes of you. Obito's goggles attest to this." Because all his masked shirts are smouldering into ash, he has tied a handkerchief to his lower face with ninja wire.

"I'll get the handkerchiefs next time as well, you know," says Obito.

.

"Damn you!" shout Obito, kicking the pile of smouldering handkerchiefs with a foot so that some of the ashy wisps fly up into the air and come apart.

"Obito, you can't have expected him to have walked around without any clothes whilst you stole his hankies," says Rin. "Although, I must say, I never expected him to sink this low."

"It's not low," growls Kakashi through the fabric of one of Gai's tea-towels. "And your behaviour is appalling." The borrowed green spandex has a happy, contented glow about it from the reflected firelight of the hankies.

.

The Kiri nin has been standing in front of three children and their sensei, with a kunai, for five minutes. He is waiting his turn.

"I swear they're just finishing up," says their sensei. "Honestly."

From the floor of the forest, the grey-haired child in the mask makes a blind grab at the one with the hand over his face and kicks out at the one trying to cut open his clothes.

"Am I allowed to attack yet?" asks the Kiri nin.

"Just a minute!" shouts the boy in the goggles.

"Two minutes!" shouts the girl, and then there is a muffled argument about how many minutes it takes to incapacitate a person and cut open a mask.

"One and a half minutes!" they both shout together, and then there is a sudden bright light and the chirping of birds.

"I'm so sorry about this," says the sensei, and then goes over to break up the fight.

.

"I swear they're not always like this," says the sensei, as the boy in the goggles and the girl make use of an opening in the battle not to attack their opponent, but to once again barrel into the boy with the mask.

.

"I am _so, so_ sorry," says the blonde-haired man who does indeed look very apologetic, as the building collapses behind him and his students run out of it, two of them chasing the other.

The Tsuchikage looks on in horror. He is never inviting Konohan ninja to discuss diplomacy again. Never, ever, ever-

"I'LL GET YOU KAKASHI!" screams one of the boys: the one holding the scissors. It doesn't sound like a threat: it sounds like a very loud promise.

.

"Tell me again," says a tired, bewildered Fugaku, " _why_ you have been suspended from active duty."

"Not my fault," mumbles Obito, scuffing the floor with his foot.

"Really," says Fugaku.

"Hn."

Obito is beginning to look more and more like a part of the rest of the Uchiha clan by the minute. His face has already morphed into a scowl and his voice is grunt-level and barely discernible.

 _Teenagers_ , thinks Fugaku. He sighs. "I assure you there's no reason for this," he says. "Hatake Kakashi has a perfectly normal face-"

"YOU'VE _SEEN_ IT!" yells Obito, and promptly uses twenty-eight separate senbon and three kunai to pin him to the wall of his office. The " _Tell me_ ," is hissed.

.

"Rin," says her teammate, "what are you doing?"

He is wearing a towel wrapped around his hips and another damn flannel on his face. She spins.

"It's the _onsen_!" she shouts. "You're meant to be _naked_! This is _so unfair_!"

"Stop peeping!" snaps Kakashi, and pushes her back over the dividing wall she'd nearly finished climbing over, back into the female section.

.

"KAKASHI, MY ETERNAL RIVAL!" booms Gai. He is flanked by both Rin and Obito, and Kakashi sighs and gets ready to abandon his half-bought shopping and escape to behind the nearest double-locked door. "I HAVE BEEN TOLD YOU ARE REFUSING TO SHOW YOUR DEDICATED AND SUPPORTIVE TEAMMATES THE ONE THING THEY …and I, truthfully… HAVE WANTED TO SEE SINCE THE BEGINNING OF OUR BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIPS!"

"Gai, be quiet!" says Kakashi, wincing.

" _Sorry_ ," says Gai. " _I am talking about your face in case you could not guess_."

Kakashi makes a sarcastic gesture towards his mask-covered face. "Here it is," he says. "Feast your eyes."

"Not like that!" snaps Rin. "The favour, Gai!"

"Gai!" snaps Obito. "The favour!"

"Oh! Sorry!" says Gai. "Kakashi, my eternal rival, I am cashing in my favour with you! For, because, in the past, I have-" he coughs and blushes, then whispers, " _I have shown you my manhood-_ " (Rin and Obito burst out giggling) "-I am asking you to show me your face in a mutual gesture of trust and respect! YOSH!"

Kakashi sighs. He has thought up this scenario and has meticulously planned for it, but he doesn't want to do what he has decided upon. He beckons Gai closer.

Gai looks excited and Rin and Obito look both curious and incensed in equal measures. Once Gai is close enough, Kakashi unzips his trousers-

.

"I can't _believe_ you did that!" shouts Rin afterwards. "I thought you said it was just a face! But you just- you just- in the middle of the street!"

Obito throws his camera to the side in disgust.

Kakashi shrugs. He zips back up his trousers.

.

"MY ETERNAL RIVAL!" shouts Gai, a week later, "I CHALLENGE YOU TO A CONTEST OF GREAT SKILL AND DEXTERITY!"

Kakashi looks suspiciously up at the two people flanking his either side. Obito is grinning.

"No," he says.

"HOW DID YOU GET SO COOL!" wails Gai. "OUR CURRENT MATCH POINTS LIE 21 TO 23 IN FAVOUR OF YOU AND I CANNOT LET THIS- I _CANNOT_ -!"

"I get it, Gai; stop shouting," says Kakashi.

Gai stops shouting, teary-eyed, and looks hopeful. "You will do it, then?" he asks (normally for once).

Kakashi sighs and nods.

"THEN WE WILL BE UNTYING THESE FIENDISH ROPE KNOTS WITH JUST OUR TEETH TO AID US-!"

"I have a better idea," says Kakashi. "Race you round the village!" And suddenly he is halfway up the street and over the rooftops - Gai following - and Obito is swearing up a storm in the distance.

"Baby pictures?" he hears Rin suggest.

Kakashi runs faster.

.

"I regret to inform you, Kakashi," says Sarutobi Hiruzen a day later from his office chair, "that, during the night, the Hatake Compound was subject to a fire. A terrible fire that utterly decimated the place. I am so sorry."

Kakashi, head bowed, stands stoic in front of his (seething) teammates and a grim-looking Minato-sensei, and accepts the news.

"Was there anything…?" he begins.

"A few items of furniture and a couple of pictures," says the Hokage. "Only that, and those were difficult to salvage. Here are the pictures."

And he hands Kakashi three pictures, singed slightly, but still obviously showing-

" _Katon_!" says Kakashi. What remains of the pictures disappear into flames. The Hokage puts his head in his hands.

"Never mind," he says. "I don't know why I thought otherwise."

"I swear I'll see it somehow, Kakashi," hisses Obito into Kakashi's ear.

Rin smiles sweetly and presses a kunai end into his back. "Likewise," she chirps.

"We'll see ourselves out," says sensei. He gently prises the kunai away from Kakashi's back and guides (pulls) Rin and Obito out of the room, keeping himself as a barrier between them and Kakashi's face.

Again.

.

"Orochimaru-sama?" asks Rin, polite to the last.

The sannin turns round in the supermarket. "Hmm?" he says. "Ah, Nohara Rin. You're Minato-kun's student, no?"

"That's right," says Rin. "I was wondering if you had any way of bringing the dead back to life?"

.

Ten days later…

"EDO TENSEI!" shouts Rin, and she and Obito stare in awe as a coffin starts rising up from the middle of her bedroom carpet. It is rather slow going, but, once it is all the way above ground, it swings open and a man steps out dazedly. They had borrowed a corpse for the purpose from their last (rather gruesome) mission a couple of days ago.

"Hi," says Obito, once the man has blinked and taken in the room with its pink wallpaper, stuffed toys and photo wall.

"Hi~!" chirps Rin. "Sorry about this, Hatake-san, but your son is just _not cooperating_ and we need your help."

"In what?" asks the White Fang, his slightly-wide eyes scanning the room. "Because I'm not helping you attack my son, if that's what you're after."

"No, silly!" laughs Obito. "You're helping us jump him and rip his surrogate face off: that's all!"

"His mask," says Rin, before White Fang can misinterpret.

"Can't you just _ask_ him to take it off?" asks White Fang.

"Tried doing that," says Obito. "He just showed us his dick instead. No matter what anyone says, I refuse to believe the two look similar enough that-"

"Hold it! Hold it!" says White Fang. "I am not helping you molest my son either."

"Aww," says Rin.

"What!?" says Obito, "No! We just want to see his face. That's all."

"I don't know," says White Fang. "Just perve on him in the shower or something. If I'd known he'd get so self-conscious about that mole, I'd have refused to let him _wear_ the- what?"

Obito was looking feral. "Is it a mole that takes up half his chin?" he asks. "Half his face? Does it have _ugly hairs_ sticking out of it? Is it _disfiguring_?"

"It's a mole," says Kakashi's dad. "It's a tiny black dot on his face."

"Damn," says Obito. "What a let-down. Anyway, we already perved on him in the shower. It was before he'd showed us his dick."

"I'm beginning to worry," says White Fang.

"Don't worry, Hatake-san!" chirps Rin. "We just have your son's best interests at heart, that all!"

"Yeah," says Obito. "I mean, we need to stop being so curious about his face before we can properly protect him on missions, after all. It's such a distracting thing: even if we just stop to accidentally think about it for a second, we might miss catching the huge jutsu flying towards his open back. It's happened before."

"It was Obito's katon," says Rin, helpfully. "We thought we'd better try burning it off of his face to start with, before we did anything serious. It might've worked, you know."

"I'm going," says White Fang.

"Not before we've gotten you to Kakashi!" says Rin, grabbing him by the arm before he can impale himself on something.

"Or we can get Kakashi to _you_!" says Obito. And then he shouts 'ta-da!' like a magician and opens the wardrobe door. A hog-tied Kakashi falls out flat on his face.

"Kashi!" shouts White Fang.

"Dad! Help!" shouts his son.

"NOW!" yells Obito. He grabs Kakashi roughly by the mask and _yanks_ -

The shadow-clone dispels.

"You didn't help," says Rin, flatly, to the White Fang who is backing slowly towards the door.

.

"AT- _CHOO_!"

"Genma?" says Rin, sweetly. "Have you got a cold?"

"It's the flu bug that's going around," says Genma, wiping his nose miserably. "Vomiting in the first twenty-four hours, sweating, shivering, cold symptoms, fever… not nice. Stay away, if you can. Same goes for you, Obito."

Obito frowns… and then grins an evil grin. "But I _love_ you, Genma," he says. "How can I possibly _keep away_?" And he lunges towards the startled chunin; grabs him by the front of his vest, pulls him forward, and slams their mouths together. After a moment of tongue wrestling (Obito managing to gain entrance into Genma's mouth after getting slobber all over Genma's lips, and then subsequently being pushed back out again with Genma's own tongue and clamped teeth), Obito pulls away. "Well," he says, wiping his mouth. "Maybe I don't love you _that_ much."

And then he's off running towards the library to learn how best to incubate germs, leaving Genma behind looking a bit shell-shocked and swaying slightly.

.

"Obito," says Kakashi, when he gets home from training to find his sick teammate sneezing into his drawer full of masks, "what are you doing?"

.

"I blame you for this," says Kakashi. Having washed all of his masks on the hottest setting manageable, he had then decided to finish up a bowl of rice he'd covered over and left in his fridge. Apparently Obito had also combed through his fridge spitting on things. Kakashi sniffles.

"Vomiting in the next twenty-four hours!" says Obito, gleefully, leant against the small bathroom's locked door with his nose in a tissue. Rin is perched happily on the cistern.

"I _know_ ," says Kakashi. And then, suddenly, he can feel rising bile in his throat. "Oh kami…" he says. "I think I'm going to-"

And, in slow motion, with his teammates watching on in muted horror, liquid vomit comes spurting through the cloth of his mask.

"Why are you so _stubborn_!?" howls Obito.

Kakashi doesn't know. He is feeling sick again. Rin dives out of the way: she is in his line of fire.

.

They ask him to play strip poker.

Rin arrives with a pack of cards and, Obito, some make-shift chips.

Kakashi shows up wearing twenty-eight jumpers.

.

It is half a day into the mission and Rin and Obito have (to Minato-sensei's obvious exasperation) taken to watching Kakashi's every move.

"I need to pee," says Kakashi. "Go away."

"What a coincidence," says Obito. "Both Rin and I both also need to pee."

"No you don't," says Kakashi. "Stop watching me."

"Alright," says Obito. "Fine. Just allow us to watch your back, ok? Peeing is dangerous. Especially in enemy territory."

Rin nods sagely.

"Enemy territory?!" exclaims Kakashi. "We're barely out of _Konoha_!"

The mission is restocking some of the Northern safe-houses, and they have all got extra things to carry. The mission hasn't got a particular time limit, so they've been taking it slow.

"Look," says Kakashi. "I'm not going to take off my mask to pee. How's that?"

"We'll still be watching your back," says Obito, which does not make Kakashi any more happy about the situation.

"You can't go around breathing through your mask all day and not take it off at some point," says Rin. "We're just waiting until you crack. Anyway, we've already seen your dick. We just want to see your-"

"Don't _tell_ him," hisses Obito. He elbows her in the ribs. She kicks him. He shoves her. She pushes him into some bushes. He explodes back out of them seething, and punches her in the face- except he doesn't, because she dodges, and-

"Kakashi's missing, isn't he?" says Obito.

"Yep," says Rin.

.

"Kakashi-kun," says Rin, sweetly, "marry, kiss, kill: bandits, your future wife, me."

"I'm not kissing you, Rin," says Kakashi, smashing one of the bandits they are fighting in the face and knocking them backwards.

"Bakashi-chan?" says Obito, sweetly.

"No," says Kakashi. "And don't call me that."

"Screw, kill, show your face to: bandits, a prostitute, me."

"Show my face to the bandits," says Kakashi, "then kill them; a situation in which they would find themselves screwed. Bandits to all."

"That's not how it works," grouches Obito.

"Hey!" snaps one of the bandits, who has overheard. "You can't just use us like that! Has he got a horrifically ugly face, or something?"

"I don't know," says Obito, innocently.

"Yeah," says Rin. "He never takes his mask off. It probably _is_ horrific, for all we know. We're told there's disfigurement-"

"It's a mole," says Kakashi.

"Not even to brush his _teeth_?" says the bandit, parrying Obito's katon with a suiton, and then parrying a kunai attack with a huge bo staff.

"Nope," says Obito.

" _Yes_ ," says Kakashi.

"Not on missions," says Obito. "I've never seen it."

"No," says Kakashi, "because I'm not showing you my face."

"It's disfigured, isn't it," says the bandit fighting Obito.

"No," says Kakashi. "No it isn't."

"Fifty ryo on disfiguration of the lower jaw," says Rin's opponent to Obito's opponent.

"My face isn't disfigured."

"Done," says Rin. "Give us your home address and we'll send you the pictures."

"There won't be _pictures_!" snaps Kakashi, and gets a nick to his mask for his trouble. Apparently even his opponent is in on it now. The world is not fair.

"Ok," says one of the bandits. "You know Iwagakure's main street? Well, if you follow that round past the shinobi outfitters-"

"I'm not _disfigured_!" snaps Kakashi. "It's a _mole_!"

.

"Obito, Rin," says Minato-sensei, sounding greatly put-upon, " _why_ are you drowning Kakashi?"

"We're practising CPR," says Rin, sweetly. "I need to for my medical training."

"And good teammates help with training," says Obito.

Kakashi burbles. The Naka river speeds past in a rush of cold water and Kakashi's head under it is just a blue shirt collar and a cloud of grey hair.

"Stop drowning Kakashi, Rin," says Minato.

"Aw," says Rin, "but he's nearly stopped breathing!"

.

"Bags-I sharing with Kakashi!" shout Rin and Obito at the same time, and then glare menacingly at each other.

"It's a _one-man tent_!" says Kakashi.

.

"DON'T WORRY! I'LL SAVE YOU!" yells Obito in the distance, which makes following him in exasperation a whole lot easier. Rin has gotten herself captured by Iwa nin, after all, and Obito has managed to shout at him enough crap to persuade him to help extricate her.

 _(Ninja who break the rules are trash. Ninja who abandon their friends whose hopes they've crushed and whose dreams they've thwarted are even more trashy than that. And ninja who wear masks all the time and don't bother to let their teammates see under them are even more trashy than trash and aren't worth spitting on and are getting the majority of the grunt work clearing up the trash in our next D-rank; that's a promise, Kashi, so there. So you'd better follow me to Rin or else. Did I mention trash? Well there you go. So there. Wait- Rin's dying. Bye!_ (Obito, Kakashi thinks, is such a child sometimes.))

So he follows.

A minute later and Kakashi is getting his eye slashed out by an irate Iwa nin.

A minute after that and the Iwa nin is dead and he is trying to rescue Rin.

A minute after that, he is getting thrown out of the way.

A minute after that, his friend's entire side is crushed by rock-fall and there's no way Obito is surviving this.

"Damn it, Obito!" snaps Kakashi, near tears. " _Why did you_ do _that, you_ prick!" He drags a hand across eyes and then lets out a sob.

Beside him, Rin is suspiciously quiet.

"I'm sorry, Kakashi," whispers Obito. "I had to save you. I couldn't just let you die."

"You're _stupid_!" sobs Kakashi. "I _hate_ you! You _idiot_!" Tears run unchecked down his face and are absorbed into the material of his mask.

"I think…" says Obito. "I think… it's near the end, Kakashi. I think I'm dying. Protect Rin for me…?"

And his eye blinks slowly shut.

Then blinks slowly open again. "Kakashi?" rasps Obito. "I know I have no right, but… please? Before I… before I… before I go…?"

Kakashi chokes on a particularly hard sob and tears down his face mask. It's hanging a little loose anyway due to the kunai swiping his eye earlier. His chin is probably scrunched up and his skin splotchy, but it is his face.

There is a bright flash and Rin puts away the camera.

From outside the cave, there comes an indignant shout and Minato comes stomping into the cave holding one of the Iwa nin by the scruff of their neck. "Obito!" he snaps. "Rin! What is the meaning of this!? This man says you _paid_ him!"

Obito, from under the rock, groans irritably and presses his remaining hand to his temples to rub at them frustratedly.

"You coward!" snaps Rin towards the Iwa nin. "You were meant to keep quiet about this!"

"You didn't tell me the _Yellow Flash_ was your sensei!" wails the Iwa nin.

"Kakashi…?" says Minato. He looks from one maskless student to the other two, and back to Kakashi again. "Why exactly is your mask off and why are you cryi-" and then he seems to catch on. "Oh for goodness sake!" he snaps. "Obito, get out from under there and stop playing the fool. You're not convincing anybody. _What_ have I told you two about trying to traumatise Kakashi?"

"Not to?" says Obito, meekly.

"Exactly," says Minato. "And we are _not_ paying you, shinobi-san. Go away." He drops the Iwa nin to the floor and the Iwa nin scampers away.

Obito crawls with difficulty out from under the rock.

"Now," says Minato, "Rin, if you could _please_ heal your teammate's eye before he goes permanently blind and sepsis sets in, that'd be _lovely_."

And then they all go home.

.

Later, Obito is sitting across from Gai at a table in one of the main-street restaurants, and is grinning conspiratorially. Rin is next to him.

Gai leans closer.

"We're charging two hundred ryo for pictures," says Rin.

"And," says Obito, "there's a _mole_."

.

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 **Please review!**

 **Alibi**

 **x**


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